Catatonic man executed in Oklahoma

[iemanja]

This is horrific. The man is a paranoid schizophrenic who has deteriorated to the point that he can't even communicate with his lawyers. He wasn't even able to ask for a last meal. SCOTUS denied his appeal, despite a prior (1986, I think) SCOTUS ruling making it illegal to execute the mentally ill. He was convicted of killing his young daughter for interrupting his playing a video game. It was a horrific crime, but he was in no condition to understand his punishment.

Oklahoma executed inmate Benjamin Cole on Thursday morning despite claims from his attorneys that he had been severely mentally ill.

Cole was pronounced dead at 10:22 a.m. at Oklahoma's state penitentiary in McAlester. He was the sixth Oklahoma inmate to be executed since the state resumed carrying them out in October 2021. . .

Attorneys for Cole did not dispute that he killed his infant daughter, 9-month-old Brianna Cole, by forcibly bending her backward, breaking her spine and tearing her aorta. But they argued that Cole was severely mentally ill and that he had a growing lesion on his brain that had worsened in recent years.


Cole refused medical attention and ignored his personal hygiene, hoarding food and living in a darkened cell with little to no communication with staff or fellow prisoners, his attorneys told the state's Pardon and Parole Board last month during a clemency hearing.

No firewall, at least for me.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/benjamin-cole-executed-oklaoma-killing-9-month-old-daughter-brianna-cole/

[WhiskeyGrinder]

1. Abolish the death penalty. K&R.

[Mosby]

2. He delivered a 2 minute prayer

How could he possibly be catatonic?

He's a sociopath and narcissist IMO.

Eta "was".

[iemanja]

3. You need to read about him

The prayer was incoherent. He was catatonic. It's been discussed in the press. I read an article before his execution saying as much.

[Mosby]

29. I don't care.

[iemanja]

5. Here

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/catatonic-oklahoma-inmate-faces-execution-unless-supreme-court-intervenes/ar-AA136hoJ

[Mosby]

30. I don't care.

[harumph]

4. You would think that at least the obviously mentally ill

would not be executed. But, no - the state must punish! A morally bankrupt action.

[Biophilic]

6. Capital punishement is so wrong, on so many levels. No matter the crime, this is wrong. nt

[XanaDUer2]

7. That poor baby

What a brutal way to die over a video game, of all things

[gratuitous]

8. And now two people have been murdered over that video game

Apparently Oklahoma takes video gaming pretty gosh durn seriously. I know I feel safer now knowing that other mentally ill people in that state will get the execution they need, rather than some namby-pamby bleeding heart treatment for their illness.

[Calculating]

9. He killed his kid for interrupting a video game?

Good execution

[XanaDUer2]

10. Kick nt

[Polybius]

11. He literally broke his 1 year old daughter in half

He pushed her feet to her neck, breaking her back and she bled to death. Fuck that guy, I hope he burns in Hell.

[XanaDUer2]

12. K n r nt

[LeftInTX]

13. He was not impaired when he committed his crime

[WhiskeyGrinder]

14. Depends on what you mean by "impaired," I guess.

Cole’s struggles with his mental health date back to his early childhood, growing up in a junkyard surrounded by “rampant” drug and alcohol abuse, his petition said. Encouraged by the adults in his life, Cole began to drink as a young child, it said, and one of Cole’s brothers testified they would get high huffing gasoline by the time Cole was 10 years old. Cole also endured years of verbal, physical, and sexual abuse, the petition claimed.

Cole graduated high school but around that time began exhibiting “all of the marks of a person beginning to struggle with serious mental illness,” the clemency petition said, noting 18 is the typical age when early-adult onset severe mental illnesses like schizophrenia first emerge.

Cole became “isolated and withdrawn,” and a stepsister said he was depressed and didn’t have many friends, the petition said. He spent long periods unemployed, and though he joined the Air Force in 1986, he struggled with substance abuse, exhibited “impulse control problems” and was discharged the following year.

It was around this time Cole’s first wife accused him of abusing their son, and Cole was convicted and sentenced to two years in prison for aggravated child abuse, the petition said. That marriage ended, as did Cole’s second, and when he met Brianna’s mother in 1998, he was living either under a bridge or in a tent in Claremore, Oklahoma.

When their daughter was born, the petition said, Cole couldn’t keep a job and was “drinking heavily.”

[Coventina]

15. Always and forever against the DP. n/t

[GuppyGal]

17. He was isolated and withdrawn...yet he married twice. Oh OK.

[iemanja]

18. While in prison?

[XanaDUer2]

19. Kick nt

[Ms. Toad]

20. Catatonic??

Catatonic is not synonymous with seriously mentally ill. I saw nothing in the article suggesting he was catatonic.

[iemanja]

21. This article discusses what his lawyers call his catatonic state

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/catatonic-oklahoma-inmate-faces-execution-unless-supreme-court-intervenes/ar-AA136hoJ

[Ms. Toad]

23. His lawyers are not doctors,

and appear not to understand what catatonic means.

[iemanja]

24. Do you favor executing the mentally ill?

Did you read the article? What does it sound like to you?

[Ms. Toad]

25. It does not sound like he is catatonic.

And disagreeing with characterizing someone who is mobile and communicative (even in a non-traditional way) as catatonic has nothing to do with my (or anyone else's) position on the death penalty. It is offensive for to imply that correcting factual information about the mental and physical status of someone who was executed has anything to do with my position on the death penalty.

I happen to believe truth is important.

[iemanja]

26. I implied nothing

I asked you some questions.
I read the description of him as non-communicative as being catatonic, as the article headline suggested.

[Ms. Toad]

27. Merely by asking the question you implied

that correction of facts implies a social/political position on the death penalty. Catatonic includes non-communicative, but also a lot more that doesn't apply in this instance. A person who is catatonic is not aware of his surroundings enough to pray for 2 minutes in advance of his execution.

[XanaDUer2]

28. K and R nt